Blood On His Hands
by All Grown Up
Summary: An X5’s thoughts and reflections on the eve of an assassination mission. He's a good little soldier who wants to make Manticore proud — but how does he avoid succumbing to the darkness?


Blood on His Hands  
  
By: All Grown Up  
  
Rated: PG-13 for violent images  
  
Disclaimer: Dark Angel belongs to people richer and more important than me. *Sniff* I've asked nicely, but Fox just doesn't know how to share.  
  
Summary: A dark, somewhat disturbing little fic about an X5's thoughts and reflections.  
  
A/N: I didn't intend for this to be so dark, but you know how it goes - I just sat down and let the story take me, and here's where I ended up. Hope you like it, and please please take the time to review, even if it's just a quick little note. You know us writers - feedback keeps us alive! I welcome kudos, flames and everything in between.  
  
Enjoy!  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
That'll be all, soldier, the Colonel says to me, clipped and precise, with perfect pronunciation, the same as all his orders. I salute, turn on my heel, and exit the room. The hallway is dark and cold. It's never been anything else. I begin the march back to the barracks, idly flipping through the crisp pages in the manilla folder the Colonel gave me. Same old, same old. Infiltrate HQ, access necessary information, take out objective, return to base for briefing. I sigh and shut the folder. Routine away mission. I'll have to jazz this one up on my own.  
  
  
Since lights out isn't until 2100 and I can still wander the grounds safely without being suspected of suspicious activity, I take a detour through Psy Ops. I'm proud to say I've never been. Never let a mission or an objective get to me. Never let the world outside the perimeter fence taint me. Never show the feelings I'm not supposed to have. I'm more controlled than most of the others. I know how to handle it. They don't. That's what lands them in there. They don't understand that the fence separates two worlds - two worlds that can never meet without messing you up somehow. I think in the other world they call it mixing business with pleasure. Something like that. Be a good little soldier. Follow the rules. Be a good little civilian. Follow the rules. Same guidelines. Different settings.  
  
  
But today is interesting. Today they're reindoctrinating one of the Rogues. I'm not sure which one. They caught him a few weeks ago in Vegas. I was almost assigned to that mission but something more urgent came up. Damn, that would've been fun. They say he put up quite a fight, despite being out in the other world for so long. The Colonel seemed quite pleased - whether it was with the Rogue's performance or with the recapture, no one knows for sure. I think it was a little of both. I've wanted to go up against a Rogue for some time. Just to see if any of them are still sharp. I highly doubt it.  
  
  
It wouldn't be so bad for them, but they try too hard. They want to forget so badly that they forget too much. They try to eliminate all the associated with training by forgetting their training as a whole, even the neccessary bits. They try to rid themselves of Manticore's dogma by creating their own, based in ridiculous idealisms like hope and home and family, and forgetting the cold, hard truths they learned here. They try to wash the blood off their hands by forgetting the things they've done, pushing them far into the shadowy corners of their minds and pretending they're above that kind of behavior.  
  
  
That's the first thing Psy Ops concentrates on. Recalling those memories. Flooding the mind and the senses with those primal instincts that have been bred into all of us. Reminding them of what they are.  
  
  
I hear the Rogue's screams. They don't particularly excite or bother me. I've heard a thousand just like it. It's the scream of a victim coming face-to-face with the deeds he's done. Sort of like a meet your maker confrontation with God type thing. Except this victim's makers really are in the room, as well as his God. Lydecker personally sits in on all the reindoctrination sessions of the Rogues.  
  
  
I've had enough of the show for one night and head to my barracks on the south side of the compound. The night air feels warmer than that of the chill hallways of the Psy Ops department, even though it is only mid-March. The Rogue's pain-filled screams float faintly into the surrounding grounds. I momentarily glance through my briefing again. This one's a genuine societal scumbag. Not all my victims are. Some are good, philanthropic, first class citizens. But that usually doesn't make a difference. Not to Manticore, and certainly not to me. Accomplish the objective. Be a good little soldier.  
  
  
And either way - they all scream.  
  
  
I've screamed that way. Once or twice, waking up in the middle of the night after a horrific dream that I can't remember. If anyone hears, they pretend not to. And sometimes it happens on the inside, boiling up like a dark cloud that chokes you and makes your stomach roll like the undulating waves of the sea.  
  
  
When I hold my .45 millimeter to this man's head in a week, he'll scream that way. It'll start in the eyes. That bleached look of terror that makes his eyes go wide. He'll get that wild look, the one that means he's searching for a way out even though he knows it's futile. Man has a sensor inside, some alarm settled deep in his mind that goes off when he knows it's his turn. He'll beg if he can form the words, plead with me, make useless promises. Sometimes that makes me smile. And then he'll know he has but seconds left. That's when he'll start screaming. He might even look at his hands, and the blood will soak them before his white-washed eyes. Then I'll pull the trigger and stop his screaming. I try not to prolong it too much for them. Call it what you will - kindness or pity or contempt or something darker.  
  
  
Sometimes that scream will stay with me for a while. I wonder what passes through their minds - what polluted deeds resurface that bring that terror to their eyes. I'm not sure if it interests me, or disturbs me, or excites me. I know it has some sort of affect on me. But no matter what, I never bring it back to base with me. I have to leave it at the maximum security gates. In the other world.  
  
  
That's why I've never been to Psy Ops.  
  
  
Even the Colonel, for all his strength, for all his speeches on weakness, emotions, and self-control - even he messes up. I can see it sometimes, when he looks at us. Especially when he looks at the Rogues, like the one in Psy Ops right now. He's proud of us. That's no secret. But he lets it go too far. He cares about us, wants to protect us. We're soldiers. He knows that. Hell, he taught us that. But it doesn't seem to stop him. The Rogues think he's some sort of heartless bogeyman, a cold-blooded killer who hunts them by day and haunts them by night. That's how they should think of him. I'm sure it's all they'll let themselves remember. But they never saw the man - only the Colonel. Behind every officer there's a civilian. Behind every soldier there's an individual. Behind every monster there's a man.  
  
  
That night of the escape - that night that was colder than any I can ever remember - he shot one of us. The Rogues saw a member of their unit go down by the hand of their CO and they decided to run. Maybe I would've done the same thing, if I were in their place. To them, she had been a . To him, she had been a . To all of them, she had been . I know it pained him. It still does. He sees the Rogues captured one by one and reindoctrinated and knows that they hate him and will never stop hating him. Maybe every time he watches one of us in that Psy Ops chair it pushes him a little farther and he knows that one day he might end up in the same chair, screaming those screams. He sees the blood on his hands, just like he saw it the night he shot her and they ran. He screamed then, too. Inside, silent, secret, but it was there.  
  
  
I've finally reached my room and I flop down gratefully on my bunk, my folder laying neatly on the trunk at the end of my bed. I stare at my hands, deciphering their fuzzy outline against the darkness of the barrack dorm room. I let my imagination go, but it won't work. I can't see the stains that should be there. Satisfied, I turn over on my side. In this place, inside these walls, I have committed no wrong. I've followed the rules, like a good little soldier should. And that's the way it should stay. I never try this trick in the other world, because then I'll see it. The deep red blotches painting my skin, hiding under my fingernails, poisoning my touch. And then I'll scream. Maybe I won't be able to stop screaming. That'll land me in Psy Ops. I've never been. And then I'll just keep screaming and screaming until there's nothing left. After that, I don't know what will happen.  
  
  
But that'll never happen, because I have nothing to scream about. Not here. Here there is no blood on my hands. I'm a good little soldier. I follow the rules. Out there, I never let myself scream. I'm a good little civilian. I follow the rules.  
  
  
The truth is, we all have blood on our hands. The soldiers like me, the Rogues like the one in Psy Ops, the Colonel, the scumbag I've been ordered to assassinate - both worlds are full of people who's hands are soaked with blood. But we never really see it until we scream.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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